watching movies one cup at a time

First let me say I LOVED Ocean’s Eleven. It was brilliant. And I HATED Ocean’s Twelve. It was pointless and a waste of time. So I had no preconceptions going into Thirteen. It could easily have sucked and it could have also easily been brilliant. And of course it wound up falling somewhere in between. But the good news is that it fell much more to the brilliant side than the sucking side. Thank goodness Clooney and crew came back and cleansed our palette from that horrible Twelve movie. Yuck.

They did the right thing by going back to Vegas. The original classic with the Rat Pack was set in Vegas. And the far superior Eleven was in Vegas. The problem with Twelve is they went all over the place just doing random crap. Who cares? A big heist that all comes together is the piece that makes this work and Thirteen’s got it. Al Pacino was great as a douchebag casino owner as was Ellen Barkin as his stressed-out second-in-command. And the whole Mission Impossible vibe keeps you on the edge of your seat trying to figure how it’s all going to go down. Of course they are going win in the end, but how they pull it off is the fun part.

Danny Ocean is the perfect character for Clooney. He plays it very natural and smooth as glass. Brad Pitt as his sidekick is the perfect understated operator that you could see pulling this off. Some of the remainder of the cast could maybe take a time out at this point though. And I didn’t miss Julia Roberts one bit. I’m not a big fan of hers anyway and in Twelve she was just downright annoying a lot of the time.

Ocean’s Eleven still reigns as the best of this bunch. But Thirteen was good enough to almost make up for Twelve. Let’s hope Fourteen (I’m sure they are doing a Fourteen) won’t suck either.